Birds and Belt Buckles
by Silent Shadow Seeker
Summary: Nightwing and a small team have completed their mission and are ready to head home. But there's trouble. As usual. **Rated T for minor MINOR swearing, possible violence and disturbing imagery in later chapters**
1. Waiting in the Worst Base Ever

Temperamental. Cramped. Hell.

Those were the three words Nightwing would use to describe the base. Located deep in the neck of a jungle in the outskirts of nowhere, the base was small, to avoid being picked up on radars, as well as to avoid being seen from a distance (as if _that _would happen). Not that you could see it even if someone _did _happen to pass by. It was old bat-tech, but it was bat-tech nonetheless, and the base was extremely hard to spot even if you knew what you were looking for. That was just how Bruce worked.

Because it was built by the Bat, Dick had thought that the inside would be nice as well, with a sufficient television, a super-computer to keep up on the times, at least cooling systems for the daytime and heaters for the night.

Nope.

It was a remotely placed base, unused for years, only there because Bats felt the need to have a base everywhere. Said base suffered greatly for this.

That wasn't to say Nightwing was ungrateful for the shelter. He was very glad it was here in this moment.

He just wished it was also better furnished.

It lacked everything but the necessities: food, water (sometimes running, sometimes not, it depended on if the system wanted to work or not), medical appliances. No TV. No super-computer, though there was a small holo-computer that only worked with the available electricity. A very, very cheap system for cooling and heating the place that only just kept visitors from overheating or freezing. It was hell, in every sense of the word. A temperamental, cramped, hell.

And the electricity had just gone out.

It was a one in a million chance of that happening, the reserves were plentiful, but it somehow still happened, making the situation that much worse.

It shouldn't have been a problem - if Flash or Wally had been there, a quick jog would have warmed the systems up, or if the solar panels were working, there would be some sort of electricity, or if the reserves still existed, some small shred of power would be left.

But the speedsters hadn't come on the escapade.

It had been raining heavily for the past couple of weeks.

And some 'natural' disaster (presumably natural) had taken out most of the reserves in a freak storm.

It was a very undesirable situation.

"Just my luck," Nightwing muttered, coming inside from a patrol around the perimeter of the building. He stripped his gloves off as he made his way over to the desk chair in front of the currently non functional holo-computer. His soaking boots squelched sadly in agreement that Nightwing did indeed have horrible luck, and the drenched vigilante flopped down onto the chair. He gingerly tapped the space key of the faded holographic keyboard, but to no avail. The computer was still dead.

A heavy sigh rumbled through Nightwing's throat, and he kicked off his boots with a deft flick of his toes against the opposite heel. He stood up slowly, carefully, trying not to aggravate the old and somewhat new lacerations he had. All because of a stupid bird.

A stupid bird had set off the perimeter alarm and killed the last bit of electricity. A stupid bird had caused him to trek outside and probably get horribly sick.

_Watch me get pneumonia,_ Dick thought to himself. _Stupid bird._

It had to be a stupid bird.

..._On the bright side_, Nightwing thought to himself,_ I only have one more day until the team comes back. Two more until we leave for the next base. About seven until I'm home. And warm. And have working systems and electricity. _

Cheered by his thoughts, the hero headed to the work room to fire up the generator. He was going to have a warm shower.

And then he was going to sleep for a long, long time.

**_lkdafnvnvjkldjafewfioujf THIS IS TOTALLY A LINE BREAK (NOTHING ELSE IS WORKING AND IT'S MAKING ME ANGRY SO JUST HAVE THIS) alkdsfjlkdjflnvlksdjufiwef_**

**_AUTHOR'S NOTES_**

Yay!

Chapter one. Or prologue. Something.

And yes, it's short, but this is the first input so whatever, the chapters will probably get longer as I go on.

Tell me how you feel about this! Tell me who you want to be on the 'team'! Hell, you can even give me an idea of why he's in some remote place waiting for the team. I am open to any and all ideas. (Mind, I might not use all of them, but you can still suggest and I will listen.)

I look forward to replies and hopefully the next chapter. We'll see what happens.

Okay. Have a good rest of your day/night/week. C:


	2. Coming Back to Base

Hello! First of all, thank you so much for the kind review, favorite, follows, and views. They are much appreciated. I really don't have anything else to say, so onto the story!

(And I don't know if you guys didn't know this, but… I'm actually not the owner of these characters! Gasp! Shocking right? Anyway.)

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"Yes. Yes, I'll check it out. ...Yes. ...Alright. ...Yes… Yes! I've got it, okay…? Okay. Red Arrow out."

"Oracle?" Tim asked, turning his chair slightly to face the older hero. Roy only let out a grunt. The red and black clad teenager gave a small grin and spun his chair back around to face the console again.

The archer leaned on the armrest of his own chair and stared out the window as he thought about what Oracle had told him to do.

Check on Nightwing.  
He was a grown man. He didn't need to be 'checked on'. However, service was down in the jungle and no one had had communication with the former Boy Wonder for three days now. Not that that was an issue, but Oracle wanted to make sure he hadn't died from tripping on a small rock or something. ...Odd, but simple enough.  
Tend to Beast Boy's arm.  
The moron had scratched it on a poisonous plant due to getting too excited. Honestly, how did someone do that? But it was Logan. How did he _not_ do something like that? Roy sighed.  
Inform Oracle of location at all available times.  
A small ping of data, she had insisted. Red Arrow didn't understand why she needed to know exactly where they were at what time and exactly where they were going and what time they left and arrived at _at all times_. But he had been strictly told that he needed to send her information when they left a base and when they arrived. No exceptions. The bats were all paranoid, Roy decided. But he already knew that.

They were easy orders. Easy enough.

Roy should probably go take care of Garfield right now, actually. Check it off the Oracle list. He stood and stretched his stiff muscles, then headed to the back of the hovercraft, motioning for the green teen to follow. The shape-shifter frowned , having guessed what it would be about, and slid from his chair.

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As he finished wrapping up Garfield's upper arm, Roy found his thoughts wandering back to Nightwing.

_He must be bored out of his mind_, the archer thought. He wondered how the energetic acrobat was biding his time.

Dick was beyond frustrated when he had learned that he would need to stay at the base. No one blamed him: the base was horrible. But when Nightwing had received a jarring blow to the leg prior to leaving the base, he had known he would only hinder the mission. And had it been a mission in some _nice_ tropics, with beaches and warm sand with warmer water, sunshine and ice cream and good temperatures, well. Prolonging the mission slightly wouldn't have bothered anybody.

However, that wasn't the case. It was a rag-tag mission with a couple of avaliable heroes thrown together to check it out.

Some chemical had been stolen from a facility in the reaches of nowhere by an amateur, but the cops were either incapable of catching the thief or nonexistent. So a simple hero call had gone out.  
It hadn't even reached League status.

Nightwing easily could have taken care of this on his own, but his problem was that it was a _very_ long mission (to him), and, being the social butterfly he was, he wouldn't have been able to stand the silence. So he had simply recruited a few allies who could keep him company… though it had turned out all for naught, as he had now been alone for around five days. It was better than a month of being solitary, though.

Oracle shouldn't have even been involved, but a weird happenstance had occurred and caught the suspicion of a few of the heroes. Meaning just the Bats.

Shortly after arrival at the Base of Hell (as it had been dubbed), perimeter alarms had started blaring every couple of hours. It was odd at best, annoying at worst.  
And then the troops had come.

It hadn't been many. Two or three people could be seen moving among the bushes surrounding the base. _Natives_, Roy had suggested. _Rabid animals_, Garfield had said. _Gangs_, Tim had added.  
_Not helping_, Nightwing would respond.

They wouldn't attack, though they didn't look or act friendly. Nightwing and Tim had even gone out to say hello once, to attempt communication. Then they attacked.  
It was three thugs, not much. Nightwing and Tim had handled the three easily, but one of them had gotten a lucky blow in and disabled Nightwing's leg.

No one would have thought anything of it, but Tim insisted that something was… off about them. As though they had a deeper intent than searching for… say, why were they out here in the first place?

Nightwing had been suspicious as well, deciding to contact Oracle and discuss the matter. They had deduced that it was not serious in the moment, but to proceed with caution.

Roy had teased that Nightwing just wanted to have his injury come from something serious instead of stupid. Nightwing had responded with a chuckle and solid blow to the back of Roy's head. The archer had shut up after that.

But in all honesty, while it did seem odd that a few random thugs were out wandering the jungle, Red Arrow saw it as nothing. This was just a stupid mission that no one cared about! It was the rag-tag team of Nightwing, Red Robin, Red Arrow, and Beast Boy. Seriously. They wouldn't be winning any medals with this sort of set up.

Stupid team… stupid mission… useless, useless, useless.

An announcement from Tim that they were arriving at the base perimeter startled Roy out of his thoughts, and he noticed that Logan had long since left the small medical area. How long had he been there?

_Long enough_, he huffed silently. He turned and made his way to the front of the small ship, taking his seat once again next to the pilot of Tim Drake.

How old was the kid? He shouldn't even be driving. Flying. Whatever.

The ship came down for a landing.

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So there you go! A little bit of explanation for the mission, why poor 'Wing was left behind, and who's on the team. The why for who's on the team will probably come later, though it's briefly explained here that they were all 'available'. I might just leave it at that, unless you guys really want to know why.  
Just in case anyone's confused (as I'll be switching between a character's first, last, and hero name a lot) here's a list of character names:

Nightwing = Richard (Dick) Greyson  
Red Arrow = Roy Harper  
Oracle = Barbara Gordon  
Red Robin = Tim Drake  
Beast Boy = Garfield Logan (Thank you, bluejay, for pointing that out to me :) )  
Batman = Bruce Wayne

If other characters come along, I'll mention their names too.

Next chapter will probably be a little bit of a slow one, as these are, but you can't have much of a story without backstory. It should pick up after chapter three.

Again, thank you so much for views, favorites, follows, reviews, I still love getting suggestions and feedback, and good day/night to you all.


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